Interest Slavery

Interest slavery’ was a term adopted by Gottfried Feder, an early convert to National Socialism. Feder believed that ‘interest slavery’ put Weimar Germany at a major disadvantage and that only by breaking it could Germany prosper once again. Feder believed that Weimar’s politicians were unwilling to break the ‘interest slavery’ that he believed blighted Germany and that only a man like Hitler would be willing to do so. As Feder wrote:

“Breaking of interest slavery is our cry on the field of battle. I know that this principle has not been rightly understood in its unheard of and fundamental importance, even in our own ranks. One sees for example how seldom our speakers dare to come to this root problem. Indeed most of them feel it to be a fundamental question; in the treasury of words of our comrades is the motto:” Fight against exchange and loan capitalism”. But just what “breaking of interest slavery” means, how it works in the practical life of the individual and the nation, what technically financial occurrences make the nation “slaves of interest” or what practical steps are necessary to carry out the breaking of interest-slavery, and what the results will be for the entire population when this interest-slavery is broken – these are all vague.

In interest-slavery is the farmer, who, in order to finance his farm, must take “credit” at so high a rate of interest, that the interest almost east up the profits of his work, or who has made or must make debts and drag the mortgage debts with him as an eternal ball of lead.

In ‘Interest-slavery’ is the workingman, who labours in the factories and workshops for insufficient wages, while the stockholder collects interest and dividends – without worry or work.

In interest-slavery is the entire bourgeoisie, which today must work practically speaking to pay for the interest on bank loans.

In interest-slavery are all who must earn their bread through bodily or mental work, while standing opposite them a class – without care and without work – obtains huge incomes through interest on loaned money, through profits in the market and through financial transactions. We do not speak of the small independent men or the men with saving accounts even though they collect small profits through a fundamentally unsound system but throughout their lives a hundred times the amount of money through taxes, pensions etc. so that in old age they may be given a part of what has been taken away from them before.

In interest-slavery is the industrialist, who has built up his business through the hardest of work, then, according to the principle of keeping up with the times has changed his business into a corporation; he is now longer his own boss, but he must satisfy the insatiable greed for profits of the members of the board and the stockholders if he does not want to be fired from his own business.

In interest-slavery is every nation that covers its need for money through loans.

In interest-slavery every nation is destroyed, every nation that gives its most important domestic sovereign rights to the money power – the bankers, its financial interests, its railroads, and the control of the most important taxes and tariffs, as Germany has done through acceptance of the Dawes Plan.

In interest-slavery are all nations and all governments that bend before the power of load-capital.

In interest-slavery is all creative work, that has lost its place to gold, so that today money had become the most brutal tyrant over work.

Breaking of interest-slavery is the steel axle about which everything turns.